1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for searching data stored in a memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been conventionally known image forming apparatuses in which image data read by an image reader such as a scanner are accumulated as documents in a large-capacity storage medium such as a hard disk drive, at least one of keywords of targeted documents including document numbers of documents to be searched or the dates of generating the documents is entered as the scope of the search to search the documents accumulated in the large-capacity storage medium, and only the searched documents are selectively displayed (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H07-85239).
In recent years, thought have been put into an image forming apparatus having a database function. In such an image forming apparatus, image data read by a scanner, received facsimile data and other data are stored in an internal hard disk drive to compile a database.
A display unit of the above image forming apparatus is designed to be considerably smaller as compared to monitors of PCs (personal computers) and the like. Thus, if a large amount of data correspond with the keyword upon searching data registered in the database by entering the keyword(s), it is difficult to display all the searched data.
Further, in the above image forming apparatus, the keyword for the search needs to be directly entered in the display unit. Thus, it is troublesome to users unaccustomed to operations to enter the keyword, presenting a problem in operability.